For Deesa, where potatoes go into cold storage and a year of income waits on when they come out.
A crop that waits in the dark
Deesa grows potatoes at a scale that supplies much of north India, and just as importantly, it stores them. The cold storage sector here is the town's real economy: the crop comes out of the ground and then sits, sometimes for months, while the owner decides when to sell.
That is an unusual position for a farmer. Most agriculture forces a sale at harvest. Here the decision is deliberately deferred, which sounds like an advantage and is also a specific kind of torment.
The psychology of holding
Every week the stock sits, the owner is making an active choice not to sell. Prices move. Neighbours sell and talk about it. Storage costs accrue. The person holding has to keep re-justifying a decision they already made, with incomplete information, in public.
People describe checking rates compulsively and sleeping badly through the holding months. Some sell early every year to escape the discomfort, and lose money doing it, knowing they are losing money.
What the work addresses
Making a decision once and then living with it - which is a distinct skill from making a good decision, and much rarer. Most of the loss here comes not from bad judgement but from revisiting sound judgement under pressure.
Sessions
Online, in Gujarati, generally in the evening.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this about trading psychology?
- Partly. The holding decision is the same problem a trader has, with a longer clock and your own crop.
- Can we work during the storage season?
- That is usually the right time, since the pressure is live rather than remembered.
